The Miracle Of Not Having To Talk About Oneself

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness Mary Oliver Every year we have been witness to it: how the world descends into a rich mash, in order that it may resume. And therefore who would cry out to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing, as we must, how the vivacity of what was is married to the vitality of what will be? I don’t say it’s easy, but what else will do if the love one claims to have for the world be true? So let us go on though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed. == 2019: Starlings in Winter, Mary Oliver  2018: Born Yesterday, Philip Larkin 2017: Thus, He Spoke His Quietus, Thomas Lux  2016: Trees, W.S. Merwin 2015: Today and Two Thousand Years from Now, Philip Levine 2014: from For a Long Time I Have Wanted to Write a Happy Poem, Richard Jackson 2013: Tear It Down, Jack Gilbert 2012: from An Atlas of the Difficult World, Adrienne Rich 2011: Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal, Naomi Shihab Nye 2010: from Pioneers! O Pioneers!, Walt Whitman 2009: from The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot 2008: from Five-Finger Exercises, T.S. Eliot 2007: Journey of the Magi, T.S. Eliot 2006: Preludes, T.S. Eliot 2005: A Song for Simeon, T.S. Eliot Dear friends, thank you for letting me mark these days of strangeness and uncertainty by sharing words with you; having a focus is good, it turns out. Things that bring comfort or distraction seem more important than ever, so here are some of my best and favorite sources of poetry, in a range of mediums, for the other eleven months of the year. (Now you will know all my secrets!) 

Bob’s Burgers - Halloween episodes

Me a tired creature glaring at the writer:

1. lizzie bennett is apologising on that amazing terrace (is that what it is?) for accidentally witnessing mister darcy act like a human and joyfully hug his sister. matthew macfadyen’s DELIGHTFULLY painful expression of “i worship you privately and torturously please don’t apologise i love you” is for me the emotional equivalent of running your hands through a cat’s fur the wrong way. i know this scene is technically a part of the “i’m very fond of walking” “yes. yes i know” scene but it’s DIFFERENT. 

2. mr darcy declares that an accomplished woman must -besides having a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages wank WANK thank you caroline bingley- improve her mind by extensive reading while glancing COMPLETELY without surreptitiousness at the book lizzie is holding. ELIZABETH BENNETT promptly snaps the book shut and, without actually saying it, calls mr darcy a bit of a stupid dickhead. she may as well have hit him in the face with it. fantastic. 

3. “mayihavethenextdance, miss elizabeth?” 

“you may.” 

THAT’S LOVE, BABEY. 

4. “your unfortunate brother once had to put up with my playing for a whole evening.”

“but he says you play so well!”

and the subsequent look of complete and utter despair and frustration that mr darcy gives to his little sister. LOVE WASN’T INVENTED UNTIL 2005. 

5. mr. darcy STRIDES into that little private room while lizzie’s trying to write a letter AND DOESN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH HIS HANDS. stands there for APPROXIMATELY 25 years simmering in his own awkwardness and also his LOVE. i’ve never heard someone say “no, thank you” so softly or with so much genuinely excruciating feeling after being offered a cup of tea. 

with flaming locks of auburn hair

with ivory skin and eyes of emerald green

your smile is like a breath of spring

your voice is soft like summer rain

dolly parton:

her: